'We didn't want to do it,' said the boy.
'Yes. I understand. But why the fight?'
'Him!' The girl pointed at Pie. 'He told us we had to or he'd beat us up.'
'Go on.'
'Well,' said the boy, 'we were scared so we went along. But when we saw the infidels we didn't want to anymore.'
'They were too old,' said the girl.
'Their flesh was gray and fat.'
'We refused. And then the infidels got mad.'
'They started to scream at us.'
'Our mother and Mohammed came in to find out what was wrong.'
'And then what happened?'
'Then the infidels and Mohammed began to quarrel. Mohammed told the infidels they'd have to pay extra because they were so ugly and old. The infidels refused to pay, and then they started to fight. A little later the police arrived.'
It all sounded perfectly reasonable to Hamid, including the part about asking for extra money from the Codds. The case was simple. It more or less solved itself. All of them were guilty. He wondered what to do. He felt a strong disgust and was gnawed at by the notion that no matter how he handled this affair it would end up being a waste of time. He turned to the Codds, translated what the children had said.
'Well,' he asked, 'have you anything to add?'
'We've been stupid, Inspector,' said Codd, 'terribly stupid. And of course we're deeply ashamed.' The Codds looked at each other, then averted their eyes. 'I don't know what more to say.'
Contrition-Hamid had heard it all before. Suddenly he was tired of Europeans, their nasty escapades, their evasive, pleading eyes.
'I don't know either, Mr. Codd,' he said. 'All my life I've tried to understand people like you. You come down here, set yourselves up on the Mountain, and then, not content with your luxurious lives, you insist on disgracing yourselves in the gutters of Tangier. Why? Can you explain it? Is it something about our town? Or is it nothing more than the natural weaknesses of your all-too-imperfect flesh?'
He waited for them to answer, and when they did not he shook his head. 'I don't know what to do with you. There's a side of me that wants to be harsh. But I find I have no desire to listen to your confessions or lock you up and watch you writhe. In fact, I think that would be meaningless. You've made fools of yourselves. You've been absurd. You are what you are, and you've done what you've done. You don't even offer me an excuse.'
He looked at them again, taking no particular pleasure in their embarrassment or in his power, as an Inspector, to settle their case as he liked. They were so pathetic, such grotesque antiques, that he felt sick looking at them, sick of their lechery and wounded pride.
'All right,' he said suddenly, 'leave. Go home. Next time there'll be no mercy. Now get out of here quick, before I change my mind.'
Ashton Codd started to say something, but Hamid waved his hand. He was not interested in gratitude. He felt tired and filled with scorn.
'So,' said Aziz when they were gone, 'do we release the others too?'
'Yes. Throw them out, all of them. Let's go home and get some sleep.'
When they were all released he gave Aziz a lift. Finally, at home, standing on his terrace, he stared out at the Mountain and listened to the wind.
The only pleasure he found those hot July days occurred during his noontime marches down the beach. He liked swaggering on the sand, pointing at people and ordering them removed. He felt then that he was doing something, perhaps purifying Tangier, but he learned from Aziz that these actions were not universally admired in other bureaus of the police. One day the Prefect himself suggested Hamid could overplay his hand.
'Look, Hamid,' he said, 'what are you trying to prove? Your cleanups don't accomplish anything. You just chase the scum someplace else.'
'Perhaps,' said Hamid, 'but at least the beach is clean. There's less crime now around the hotels.'
'My advice is to stick to foreigners and not worry so much about vice. Inspectors sometimes go too far and then they find themselves transferred. Ever been to Ksar es Souk? In the Sahara the sun shrivels up your tongue.'
It was a threat without substance, and it failed to fill him with any fear. Still he wondered if he was doing good, if his cleanup was anything more than a charade.
The day he spotted the joggers on Vasco de Gama turned out to be the hottest of July. As he drove about Tangier, feeling the heat rise hour by hour, he had an inkling of what August would be like, and bit his lip in dread. It would be Ramadan, coinciding with the hottest month as it did once in twenty-five years. Sunrise to sunset without food or a drop to drink-in August that would be more than fasting; that would be agony without respite.
He spent the day visiting his men, trying to sort out crimes of substance from a backlog of unresolved complaints. He was tired of sex crimes and smugglers of hashish, tempests on the Mountain, vagrant hippies, trivial disputes. Something was happening in Tangier, but he didn't know what it was. He could feel the tension all around but couldn't put his finger on its cause.
He passed people as he drove: Robin Scott giggling in a cafe, Laurence Luscombe walking wearily on the Boulevard, stooping in the heat. The old actor's face was pale as chalk. His wisps of whitened hair blew crazily in the blowtorch wind.
He noticed the Freys' limousine parked before a bank. Though he knew they were the notorious Beckers, he also knew there was nothing he could do. Since they were rich, they could keep an extradition order from ever getting to the courts. His only hope, he felt, was to keep up a patient watch. If an Israeli agent ever did turn up, he might manage to catch them all in a tour de force.
Heading back to the Surete he saw Vicar Wick leaving Madame Porte's
Finally at seven, exhausted by another incoherent day, he picked up the book Farid had found for him, left his office, and walked downtown. He fought his way through the throngs that crowded Boulevard Pasteur at dusk, passed a band marching back and forth blowing trumpets and beating drums.
When he walked into his brother's store, Farid's assistant was showing a necklace. His customer, a French lady accompanied by a boxer dog, was debating the merits of the piece and the astronomical asking price. Hamid interrupted, asked the assistant for Farid. The bartering continued. The assistant pointed to the stairs. Hamid mounted them quietly-only later he asked himself why. He hadn't intended to surprise his brother, but he didn't want to disturb the negotiations in the shop. He had just stepped into the dim upstairs room, the room where Farid stored and showed his rugs, was looking around, wondering where his brother was, when he heard a groan quickly followed by a gasp. He moved slowly, quietly, toward a mound of rugs piled near the wall. He heard the sound again and, following his policeman's instincts, moved closer so he could look behind.
He guessed they'd heard his footsteps-the next moment their startled eyes looked into his: Farid and Herve Beaumont, the olive-skinned body of his brother, the pale one of the European boy, entwined, naked on the floor.
The bargaining downstairs had become shrill-he could hear the high-pitched cries of the Frenchwoman demanding a concession in the price. Herve began to giggle, then to rock his body back and forth, but Farid remained still, his face impassive, a look Hamid remembered from their boyhood, as if he expected to be hit.
A long moment passed between them as they searched each other's eyes. Later Hamid had the impression that they'd tried to peer into each other's brains. But then the mood was broken by a bark-the Frenchwoman's boxer downstairs.
'I just came by to return the book,' he said. He laid it on top of the rugs, turned, and walked away.
Downstairs Farid's assistant was standing in the doorway talking to another assistant shopkeeper from across the street. 'What a bitch,' he was saying as Hamid brushed by. 'When I met her price she laughed at me,
